Some of you already know this, but just to make it official – the PC version of Cthulhu Saves the World will actually be a combo pack that also includes Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. Oh and there will be a few minor improvements to Breath of Death VII since we’re using the Cthulhu Saves the World engine for it (stuff like being able to save anywhere). All this for $3. Yes, we’re insane to offer so much RPG goodness for such a low price, but I think Cthulhu would have wanted it this way..

Porting BoDVII to the PC has been much easier and faster than I expected so it’ll probably be done this week. If you’ve already signed up for the CSTW beta testing, I’ll probably send you an email offering access to the BoDVII PC beta testing as well. The actual CSTW PC beta testing will probably begin next week. Oh and I’m sorry, but we don’t need any more beta testers – we’ve already got plenty.

I’ve added two new documents to the Free Stuff section of the website, along with a link on the right to make the Free Stuff section easier to find. The first of these is the original design document for Cthulhu Saves the World with notes talking about how the design changed from its origin to the finished game. Since there are a lot of spoilers in there, I highly recommend not reading it until you’ve finished the game. The second document is the text file that I used to keep track of enemy stats & abilities in Breath of Death VII. Hopefully, you find these two documents interesting.

The stuff in our free stuff section is, well, free, but if you’ve especially enjoyed any of the things there, please consider making a donation to Zeboyd Games via the nifty Paypal donate button that we’ve just installed on the right side of the blog. 🙂

7 Responses to “Breath of Death VII PC, Free Stuff, and Donate Button”

Good news, sirs. My only point in making money on such a game would be to pay people to do the things that I cannot do (well) for my next game.

Just think, in fifteen years Zeboyd will be up to making Cthulhu Saves the World XIII, and none of the original company founders will remain. The series will have diverged into more of an “interactive action-movie” starring its protagonist, an angst-ridden 18-year-old, surf-sword wielder named Kilometer.

Speaking as a JRPG consumer, I love the offer and will look forward to finally playing your games (there’s no XBLIG in my country) at an awesome price!

However, as a fellow JRPG developer, I must warn you are setting a dangerous precedent with such a low price. The reason why prices are so low in the App store and on XBLIG is because people are trying to get on the “Sales Leaderboards.” There are no such things in the wide and expansive PC market, so there is no reason to condition people to accept ever lower prices for quality. This makes the market ever more hit-based and essentially destroys the long tail of discoverability.

Say I spent 5,000 to make a game, and only get 100 sales (the average for non-hit indie games). On the PC front 1000 sales is already deemed successful for a niche game. If I charge $3 there is no way to recover that capital. You are going to destroy the RPGMaker ecosystem for sure. (Thank goodness I’m not making my JRPG with RPGMaker)

When I first decided to become an indie developer people were selling games for $20. Fast forward a few years of development and the Amazon and Big Fish Games price wars and now I plan to sell for only $6.99 and now even that’s going to be considered too expensive. We’re talking about a 12-hour RPG here.

I sincerely hope you’ll be our friend because otherwise you’ll destroy us all.

I agree that we could probably charge $5 for BoDVII+CSTW on the PC and most people would be fine with that. Bill & I have discussed the pricing of the PC version at great length and in the end, we don’t feel right upping the price for the PC version just because we can get away with it. The fact of the matter is that CSTW costs $3 on the 360 and it will cost $3 on the PC. And to be nice, to increase demand, and to make up for the fact that PC players have had to wait longer, we’re throwing in BoDVII free of charge.

As for the 360 version of BoDVII, sorry, it won’t be receiving any updates. It’s a technical issue (unlike CSTW, the 360 & PC versions of BoDVII are separate entities and so updates made to one aren’t automatically added to the other). There’s no new story or dungeons or anything like that – they’re just general improvements that we made with CSTW that are easier to leave in the code than remove.

As for the donate button, many people have been suggesting that we add one for a while now, so we finally did. If people use it, great. If people don’t, no big deal.

Sorry, my metaphor was a bit off. If it’s a guitar case, that implies that it’s a street performer, not a panhandler. In which case, dropping change is like paying for a performance. But I hope you get the idea.

Dude, the price for the combo pack is way too low. I would gladly pay $4 or even $5 to get these two games together. I imagine the $2 difference would not phase most customers, either. The Paypal button is a nice touch, but as a capitalist, I feel much better about paying premium price for premium product than throwing pocket change into a guitar case on the sidewalk.